Every month, Harumi Sugiyama and Yumiko Hongo visit an apartment complex in Tokyo accommodating people who fled the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, listening to the evacuees as they talk about their daily lives, frustrations and sorrows.
The two are mental care specialists who have taken up the task of helping people deal with anguish through dialogue. And it is not only their professional skills that help them relate to the evacuees —Sugiyama and Hongo have their own experiences with grief.
Sugiyama, 51, faced the death of her 34-year-old husband in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. Hongo, 51, lost her 7-year-old daughter in a stabbing rampage at an elementary school in Osaka Prefecture the same year.